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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25275541">half of your heart is yet to come home</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl'>TolkienGirl</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [269]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Celegorm has a soft side but it's hard to find, Dialogue Heavy, Gen, Hunting, Odd Couple Friendships, Title from a Sleeping At Last Song, except not because they're perfectly matched, set directly after chapter 4 of someone who no longer is</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 05:34:37</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,737</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25275541</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“Think I’m not dangerous?”</p><p>She snorts.  “Haven’t thought about it one way or t’other.”</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Arien &amp; Original Female Character(s), Celegorm | Turcafinwë &amp; Maedhros | Maitimo, Celegorm | Turcafinwë &amp; Original Female Character(s), Maedhros | Maitimo &amp; Original Female Character(s)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [269]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1300685</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>14</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>half of your heart is yet to come home</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Frog has become very naughty, since he started talking. When Sticks tells him to git, to git <em>up</em>, to hop along, he does no such thing. Instead, he stares at her with big dark eyes, cold as night air, and says,</p><p>
  <em>Don’t want to.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Don’t want to. Don’t want to. Won’t. I want sup-per. I want to see Russandol. </em>
</p><p>When Sticks complains of this, Bel—Estrela says it isn’t Sticks’ duty to mind him anymore. Says he’s safe here, <em>long as he’s in your sight, or mine. But I’ll try to make it mine more often, Sticks. You have to—</em></p><p>And as she said that, Estrela smiled the soft, crooked smile that meant she was thinking of life, spring buds, pleasant sleep.</p><p><em>You can do as you please, now</em>, Estrela said.</p><p>It’s all very well that Estrela is happy. Sticks <em>wants </em>her to be happy. But that doesn’t mean she wants to be sassed by <em>Frog</em>, of all creatures. Hasn’t she hidden him from bad things, from bad men? Hasn’t she fed him? Hasn’t she kept him warm?</p><p>Sticks supposes that, with the benefit of what Gwindor calls <em>a roof over your heads and a hot meal three times a day so be grateful</em>, she has time to think of who she is, and who Frog is. Who they is—are—to each other.</p><p>What Sticks has decided is that they are brothers. Sticks’ Ma wasn’t Frog’s, but that doesn’t matter. Can’t matter. <em>Brothers</em>, from what Sticks can tell, pick at each other and look for each other and don’t sit together at table, except when they do.</p><p>She leaves Frog with Wachiwi, who likes him very much—isn’t rude to<em> her</em>, the little jumper—and slips out the backdoor by the kitchen. She wrinkles her nose, smelling lye and hating it. Used to crack her hands open, damned lye. Washing dishes, tin edges sharp enough to cut; men smelling like sweat and piss and baccy. One of them touched her once. Put his hand—</p><p>Sticks squints up at the pale sun, shaking the memory away.</p><p>A hill goes up to her right, a scrubby, rocky hill with bushes like horned beetles sidestepping down it. One of the bushes is moving—two of ‘em, in fact. She’s glad to be alone, just then, because Frog would be frightened.</p><p>They’re not bushes. She’s a little fool. They’re just Celegorm and the big dog, Huan. Celegorm makes her mad, even if he’s rather pretty. Not as pretty as Russandol was, but with a good-like face. Too bad his mean eyes are stuck in it.  </p><p>Most important, Sticks isn’t afraid of him. Him or the big dog. They both bark a good deal.</p><p>She wonders why Celegorm is creeping along like that. He’s bobbing, shuffling. Staying low? Hiding? Sticks knows a thing or two about hiding. She’ll spook him out.</p><p>She puts her head down and runs fast and hard, elbows almost to her thighs. If she can just get to where the ground starts rising, she’ll be hidden from him by the beetle-bushes.</p><p>“Stop!”</p><p>The gall of him! Sticks straightens up, not about to be cowed or seen looking so, and takes another step.</p><p>“I mean it!” Celegorm bellows. “Stop, right where you are. Jesus, I’ll be right down.”</p><p>Sticks stands still, because he isn’t angry. She knows what killers look like, and Celegorm is one of them, but he’s Russandol’s brother, too. He won’t hurt her, and that’s why she isn’t afraid.</p><p>He is standing beside her in just a moment. Huan pants a friendly, pink-tongued greeting, but Stick pokes her chin forward. “Why’re you shouting like that? Fit to scare up a flock of locusts.”</p><p>Never mind that it’s winter.</p><p>“You listen here,” Celegorm mutters. “You—here. Follow me.”</p><p>Sticks thinks that sassing him again would be a mistake. She’s not afraid, mind you, but she also isn’t stupid. She follows.</p><p>“Exactly,” Celegorm says. “Exactly where I step.”</p><p>They take three steps, and then he draws up, like a horse with a bit between its teeth.</p><p>“See here?” He points. He has a longbow on his back, which Stick would rather study, but she grudgingly trails the invisible line between his finger and the dirt.</p><p>At first, she sees nothing but a glint. Then she sees that it is a metal stake, neither wider nor longer than her smallest finger. There is a brown wood-chip beside it.</p><p>“What is it?”</p><p>“That’s soaked in creosote,” Celegorm says. “So he—” He means Huan—“Can smell it. The stake’s a marker. There’s an explosive here.”</p><p>“An explosive?” Damn it all, sometimes she doesn’t know words.</p><p>He flexes his fingers. “<em>Boom</em>.”</p><p>“Oh.” She sucks her teeth. Then she’s hornet-sharp again. Can’t help it. “Why in hell is there such a thing in the ground? Did you put it there?”</p><p>“No. Curufin did.” He lifts his hat off his head, drops it down again. Stares at her like he doesn’t know what to do with her.</p><p>Curufin is the pointy one. “Well, why in hell did Curufin?”</p><p>“You are such a little <em>wasp</em>,” says Celegorm.</p><p>“Hornet.” Wasps are measly.</p><p>“Oh, crikey. Good God. How could I, allow me to beg your fu—your pardon.”</p><p>“I’m not a baby,” Stick scoffs. “You can say <em>fuck</em>.” She glances up the hill, pretending not to notice how his mouth drops open. “What were you doing up there? Hopping?”</p><p>“Scouting.” He shifts the bow on his back a little.  “What were you doing? Other than courting death.”</p><p>“Scouting,” Sticks retorts. “What, there can’t be two of us? You think I can’t help?”</p><p>“You’re a baby,” Celegorm says, smiling a wolf-smile. “Sorry.”</p><p>She folds her arms. “Not what your brother said. <em>He</em> let me help him.”</p><p>That eats at him. She can tell. He doesn’t hide as much in his eyes as he likely believes.</p><p>“You’ll be underfoot.” But he looks over his shoulder, to where the land curves away and down, down to the road and the bridge that carries the road, out into the world.</p><p>“Were you watching Beren and Finrod? They’re gone. Already gone. Over the bridge and…off they run.”</p><p>He shrugs. Doesn’t answer. Then a moment later, asks instead, “You know their names?”</p><p>“I know everyone’s names.” She is still uneasy over a few, but he doesn’t need to know that. “Can I see your bow?”</p><p> </p><p>“A salt lick is one way to draw ‘em,” Celegorm explains, keeping low amid the brush. Huan is a grey shadow beside him, not panting now. Sticks notes that Celegorm does not lie flat on his belly, but rather, crouches with one knee down and the other up a little, so that he can rise quietly, his bow at the ready. “But they’re hungrier than usual, this time of year. Even here.”</p><p>“Even here?” She practices the posture. Pushes herself up and down. She has spent her life being quiet too.</p><p>“Well, we’re from the East. Where it’s cold.”</p><p>“Russandol is cold here, too,” Sticks points out. “But that’s because he’s so thin.”</p><p>Celegorm drops out of his stance, loose-limbed. The deer he pointed out is too far to shoot anyway, and Sticks thinks he hasn’t much fighting spirit in him today, despite his earlier words. Not much fighting spirit, but he helped her climb the hill and wander through the edges of woodland.</p><p>She thinks, somehow, that it’s for Russandol. And that much is confirmed when Celegorm says,</p><p>“How’d you come to know him?”</p><p><em>You can do as you please, now</em>.</p><p>“He was brung.”</p><p>“Brung?”</p><p>“Brung—down to us. Just like everyone else. I was brung, too, but that was years ago,” she adds modestly, hoping Celegorm won’t press her on that point. He doesn’t. “Russandol came in the summer.”</p><p>Celegorm hums his agreement. “Sounds right.”</p><p>“How’d he get taken?” Sticks asks. “And not the rest of you?”</p><p>Because it isn’t fair, that. It isn’t fair, that Celegorm can have a fine longbow and Curufin can have his sneaky ground-fires and Russandol—Russandol is weak on his back, with only one hand.</p><p>“Not yours to know,” Celegorm says, his face turned from her. “If he didn’t tell you.”</p><p>Russandol, when he had two hands, made plaits in Sticks’ hair.</p><p><em>There you are</em>, he said, a scrap of a grin peeking out. <em>Quite a lady.</em></p><p>And Estrela smiled her soft, crooked smile.</p><p>Sticks is glad that Celegorm isn’t looking at her. She doesn’t know what Russandol didn’t tell her; how can she? But she knows <em>why</em>.</p><p>“He didn’t want to hurt us,” she says. She is thinking of what she won’t tell Celegorm—the forest, the terrible cold, the man in the tree. A river of blackness, like the tar they used to stir in back-breaking strokes, threatens to overcome her if she thinks of the man in the tree.</p><p>
  <em>You may have to run. Even if I can’t. </em>
</p><p>Russandol—drowning—</p><p>“No,” Celegorm says, pushing himself to his feet. “He never does.” He shakes himself. Huan shakes himself, too. “We should be getting back. They’ll think you’ve been nabbed.”</p><p>“By you?” Scorning him, she is on safer ground.</p><p>“Think I’m not dangerous?”</p><p>She snorts.  “Haven’t thought about it one way or t’other.”</p><p>He glares. “I mean it. Back down. I’ve had a long—a long fucking day.”</p><p> </p><p>They are down the wild hill again when Sticks has her words in order. She counts the secret metal stakes, the dark woodchips. Takes a breath.</p><p>“There you are,” Celegorm says.</p><p>
  <em>There you are.</em>
</p><p>“Just because he didn’t say it there don’t mean he—he just <em>couldn’t</em>, all right?” She scrunches up her face, frustrated, because she really thought that she had them in order. She tries again. “It wasn’t safe. He couldn’t tell us about you, or anything. Doesn’t mean he didn’t want to.” She remembers something else Estrela said to her, long ago now, when Sticks was the one who trusted Russandol and Estrela had to listen to her. “It wasn’t easy for him to hide.”</p><p>Celegorm cocks his head, taking it in almost like Sticks boxed his ear. Of course, she couldn’t reach, but—</p><p>Sharp, he asks, “Why’d they take his hand?”</p><p>The question stills her. “I—I don’t know.”</p><p>“Didn’t think you would. Had to ask.”</p><p>He walks on ahead of her, his bow springing up and down on his shoulder, his dog trailing him, his danger invisible.</p><p>Sticks thinks, sore inside,</p><p>
  <em>There you are.</em>
</p>
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